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Division of Fluid and Mechatronic Systems, Department of Management and Engineering, Linköping University, Linköping,
Sweden
E-mail: alessandro.dellamico@liu.se, magnus.sethson@liu.se
Abstract
Digital hydraulics is an ongoing trend that offers many interesting advantages and possibil-
ities. Digital refers to that the system output is discrete, e.g. using an on/off valve with
only discrete values or a finite amount of flow steps available. The advantages mentioned
when compared to analogue systems are better performance, robust and fault tolerant, and
amplitude independent bandwidth. On the other side noise and pressure pulsations must be
handled, the physical size can be a problem, and the system requires complicated control.
When considering control of linear motion, there are mainly two branches, controlling the
flow with several parallel connected on/off valves, which generates discrete output flow val-
ues, or switching valves, which in theory can generate any mean output flow. The latter only
requires one valve for each flow path but the demand for fast valves is very high, while the
former requires many valves but avoids high frequent switching. With the introduction of a
multi-chamber cylinder, secondary control is now also possible for linear motion. This paper
is a first step in the investigation of the system applied to an excavator arm. The cylinder has
four chambers, each with different area. Three pressure lines are used and a valve-pack of 27
on/off valves. The valve-pack connects the three pressure lines with each chamber generating
81 available force steps. The scope has been to start out with relative simple control of the ve-
locity of the cylinder. To handle unnecessary switching of valves, different penalty strategies
were tested. The results are promising where relatively smooth control could be achieved at
the same time challenges with the system were identified. Next step is to investigate the force
transients due to different capacitance in all four chambers as well as mode control for better
accuracy. Energy potential compared to original system remains to investigate as well.
505
ment machines only. The technique has a high potential of
being a very energy efficient system [10], since no valve throt-
tling takes place. The system uses a constant pressure supply
line and if an accumulator is connected to the system, energy
can be recovered during retardation of the load. Several sec-
ondary control units can be added to the same supply thereby
pC
simplifying the piping. A secondary controlled swing drive
pB
of an excavator was investigated in [11] and showed upon a
possible 60 % energy consumption reduction. The challenge pA
multi-chamber pD
with secondary control is however the need for advanced con- cylinder (27:3:9:1)
pack with on/off valves combines the supply lines with the pA pB pC pD
different chambers. In this way the cylinder delivers discrete n=4 n=2 n=2
pM
The scope of this paper is to investigate a four chamber cylin- 25 mm ID,
10.0 m
Dp = 60 cm3
der with three pressure lines, generating 81 force levels, ap- pL np = 800 rpm
506
In this way the boom can be loaded with up to 400 kg.
D B
3 Control structure
A traditional hydraulic system gives the operator a way to
control the velocity of the piston. The system studied is sec-
ondary controlled and is therefore force controlled. Some
kind of external controller is therefore required in order to
control the velocity. In order to investigate the system and its
behaviour a simple control approach has first been tested. The
Figure 3: Available force spectrum for HP = 200 bar, MP = actual force applied by the cylinder is calculated as:
110 bar, and LP = 20 bar.
F = pA AA − pB AB + pC AC − pD AD (1)
The valve-pack is controlled by an prototype Exertus HCM-
series unit which communicates with the industrial computer
3.1 Control Strategy A
MPL PIP8 via a CAN bus. The controller software is devel-
oped in Matlab/Simulink and downloaded to the industrial PC The controller is a PI-controller that compares a reference ve-
through xPC Target. The valve control unit also provides ana- locity of the piston with the actual velocity. The output from
logue input channels for sensor data. Sensors used are pres- the controller is the required force to follow the reference.
sure sensors for the three pressure lines and each chamber of Since the system is digital and therefore discrete, only a fi-
the cylinder. In this way the pressure drop over the valve-pack nite amount of force steps are available and the closest avail-
can be measured. The position of the piston is measured with able force compared to the reference force needs to be chosen.
a potentiometer multi-turn wire sensor. The derivative of the This is done by comparing the reference force with each avail-
position signal is filtered with a second order low pass filter able force and the combination that gives the smallest error is
to get the velocity of the piston. chosen according to 2.
Future work of the test rig involves the installation of the outer
arm as well. This will further extend the possibilities of the u = min Fre f − F̂(ui ) i = 1 : 81 (2)
elaborative studies of the system characteristics. The multi-
chamber cylinder for the outer arm will use the same three The actual available force steps depends on the pressure in the
pressure lines as the installed boom cylinder. The amount three supply lines. As they will fluctuate during movement of
of hoses is reduced compared to a traditional system. Also, the crane, the supply pressures are measured and the force
energy can be recovered from both actuators. The future test distribution updated each time step. The control structure is
rig is shown i fig. 4. seen in fig. 5. The measured supply pressures are quantized
to avoid influences from measurement noise.
507
HP
MP
Since also the larger chambers changes pressure the move-
LP ment is less smooth. Figure 7 shows the result of the test
with 200kg and penalty function A. Frequent switching is no
Valve Combination
PI-Controller
selection
Plant longer taking place but accuracy has become worse which af-
fected the smoothness. Figure 10 shows the same run with
400kg. Here it is even more obvious that the frequent switch-
ing no longer takes place. The movement is smoother due to
Figure 5: Controller structure. the larger inertia but since no functionality is implemented to
handle zero velocity input, the resolution is not high enough
to find force equilibrium for those cases. Figure 8 shows the
Due to the discrete nature of the system, unnecessary switch- test with strategy B. No difficult pressure changes occur and
ing between different force states might occur. To avoid this the result is similar as in the case with no penalty function
a penalty for switching can be introduced. The controller is implemented. The effect of strategy B is seen in fig. 11,
only allowed to change force state if changing state has big where frequent switching of all chambers at the same time
enough effect. The penalty is added to every force level ex- is avoided.
cept the previous one. This is according to [13]. The selection
of combination can now be updated as follows.
u = min Fre f − F̂(ui ) + P j i = 1 : 81 (3)
1 if ui 6= u previous
j=
0 if ui = u previous
where P is the penalty and is a tuning variable together with
the PI-controller gains. u and uold are the new and old control
combination respectively.
4 Experimental setup
Several tests are conducted in order to evaluate the system’s
ability to be controlled by a velocity reference. For all tests Figure 6: 200 kg with no penalty.
the input signal is a pulse train with an amplitude of 3cm/s.
The tests are carried out in both directions of the cylinder.
Before changing direction the arm is set to stand still for 2
seconds. The input reference signal is somewhat smoothen
by limiting the maximum allowed acceleration and jerk. For
each control structure two load cases are tested, 200 kg and
400 kg. All controller parameters are tuned experimentally
and a penalty of 2000 N is used.
5 Results
Figure 6 and fig. 9 show the results of the test with 200kg and
400kg respectively. For the 200kg weight only the B and D
chambers switch pressure. They are small which results in a
quiet smooth movement. For the heavier weight all chambers
changes pressure. This occurs frequently during acceleration.
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Figure 7: 200 kg with penalty strategy A. Figure 9: 400 kg with no penalty.
Figure 8: 200 kg with penalty stategy B. Figure 10: 400 kg with penalty strategy A.
509
frequent which affected the smoothness of the arm. Two dif-
ferent strategies were tested to avoid this behaviour, both af-
fecting the switching of the valves. By adjusting the con-
trol and switching strategies it is potentially possible to adjust
operation conditions, controller trajectory performance and
noise generation.
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7 Conclusions
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